Storm Center Update - Saturday AM

Some parts of KELOLAND are now under a BLIZZARD WARNING. That warning is for tomorrow morning and more on that in just a second. An upper-level system has been tracking near the Canadian border recently and is now evolving down to the surface. That means the snow-making system will grow across South Dakota throughout the day today. We had some areas with morning fog and even if that can burn off, we’ll still have grey skies for most of the area today.
South winds could warm middle-levels just enough so that freezing rain in the SE becomes a concern. At the ground, there shouldn’t be an issue for whatever falls to stick but we could see that freezing rain for a time. It looks like this system will look like a boomerang on radar. That’s because an area of drier air will try to slow down snow totals for parts of KELOLAND. This mean the best accumulations will be in northern, north-central and east-central KELOLAND. I attached a snow total map to our KELOLAND Facebook page and it is also on WeatherNow. In a thin band close to Brown County, it looks like some could see more than five inches. The best overall moisture is just across the Minnesota border in areas like Ortonville.
We could see several waves of snow from the same storm. Wrap-around winds will be strong and that should drive in fresh (but lighter) snow tomorrow morning. That’s when the Blizzard Warning replaces a Winter Weather Advisory. Polar air is soon to move in tonight. Winds will drop visibility in some locations to near whiteout levels. When you combine that with several inches of powder, you can get blizzards for a time.
Most of the snow will be out of KELOLAND by later tomorrow afternoon. Then we are in the deep-freeze for most of the coming week. Sunday night into Monday morning will be particularly rough. Some of us could fall below zero. We’ll have brief clearing skies plus cold air aloft. Those two things won’t help warm us next week. That cold air aloft will also lead to thick clouds next week.